by Dan Abnett
Gilead nocked an arrow at a distance of fifteen or twenty yards from his target and finished the beastman off with one well-aimed shot through the head.
Fithvael dusted himself off and sheathed his sword with a sigh of relief. The two elves made their way back to Niobe, leaving the carcasses in the forest behind them.
THE TRIO HAD continued their journey only a few hundred yards further when Niobe brought them to a halt.
‘We have arrived,’ she said, turning to face Gilead and Fithvael. ‘How do you wish to proceed?’
Fithvael looked over her shoulder as she faced them.
‘I see nothing,’ the veteran elf said. ‘Where is Lord Ire’s castle?’
Niobe turned slowly until she was facing the same direction as her companions, and in the haze before her Fithvael and Gilead saw the vast outline of the Chaos champion’s castle take shape, shimmering into vision from amidst the forest night-mists. ‘You see it only through my eyes,’ explained Niobe, ‘but do not doubt that it is here.’
THIRTY PACES FROM the monumental facade of the castle, a long, low ramp began to rise out of the swampy ground, leading to a portcullis in the centre of the great wall before them.
‘A welcome,’ Gilead said coldly. ‘More than we were granted last time.’
‘It’s simply an entrance hidden from all but those who have the magic to see it,’ answered Niobe. Her light, confident manner belied her fear. The rank stench of Chaos permeated the air they breathed and the earth on which they stood, and she felt it more acutely than her companions. But she had Gilead’s strength to draw upon, and in return he had at least a taste of her magic powers.
As they approached the portcullis, Niobe found her way to the head of the group, stopping only yards from the heavy, grilled entrance. The square spaces in the otherwise solid structure began to throb and warp, until a narrow gap opened wide enough for the three elves to step through.
‘How do you shift reality so?’ Fithvael asked in wonder.
‘Because it isn’t reality,’ answered Niobe, simply. ‘Not yet, anyway. It’s growing ever more solid, but it’s still illusion, an afterimage of the real bastion in Ire’s domain, projected here. I can expose it, show it to you. All the while it is insubstantial, neither truly here nor there, I can work upon the illusions and shape them to our own purposes.’
‘But this place is evil,’ said Fithvael, struggling to understand her skills and how they might be used.
‘Evil, yes,’ said Niobe. ‘This place is thoroughly corrupt because the magic is manipulated by darkest evil, but believe me when I say that magic power by itself is not evil.’
They stepped into a long, wide space that might have been called a great hall. Bolted doors ran along the walls, at a variety of heights, leading, Gilead supposed, into rooms beyond. Passageways led off in other directions, and staircases, ascending and descending at impossible vectors, seemed to add another, unwholesome dimension to the three that were naturally invested in the space.
Niobe made only the briefest examination of the topography before leading Fithvael and Gilead on through the draughty hallway and up a staircase that had seemed a moment before to be plunging into the bowels of the castle.
Another moment or two, and they stepped through into a huge, cuboid area, which appeared to have been wrought from some metal, pewter perhaps. Where walls, floor and ceiling met each other, the joints were invisible. The walls had a beaten, matt finish, without windows or doors, or any other visible entrances or exits. The light that fell across them was even and cast no shadows. Worryingly, there was no obvious light source.
Gilead and Fithvael raised their swords as a foul smell began to leak into the room out of nowhere.
‘Ire-‘ Niobe gasped.
A figure stepped out of shadows and it seemed to grow in stature as it strode toward them. It filled the space, and the space expanded to suit the growing stature of the man. The cube-shaped metal chamber had been perhaps ten paces in all directions, but was now a hundred feet across every measurement.
‘More space for me to work in,’ said Gilead aloud, staring into the unknowable divided face of Lord Ire.
Gilead and Fithvael lowered their stances in an aggressive posture.
As if mocking the very sight of them, Lord Ire threw back his head and let out a sound that might have been a laugh, but that seemed to echo round his huge body before escaping through his divided mouth.
‘Now!’ shouted Gilead, his voice sounding like music after Lord Ire’s extraordinary bellow.
Gilead and Fithvael circled and lunged around Lord Ire, but as they did so the room began to move on some invisible axis, tipping the floor and turning the walls. The elves were disorientated, and their feet faltered as they looked about them for a solid flat surface.
There was none.
Gilead could no longer see Niobe, but he could hear her sweet tones in his mind. ‘Shake off the illusion! It’s in your mind. He owns this place and he will use it, but it is as nothing if you deny it!’ she instructed him.
He watched Fithvael drop to one knee as the room rocked and turned about them.
‘It’s mere illusion, Fithvael!’ he yelled. ‘Block it out!’
The warriors lunged at Lord Ire again. Again the room rolled and twisted, but this time Gilead and Fithvael kept their feet.
Lord Ire drew his sword. It was long and broad, but the Chaos lord held it in one hand, flicking casual figure-eights around his body.
Fithvael stepped in to parry the first lunge of the fearsome weapon, but he was swatted off his feet as if he had been made of paper. Lord Ire swung again at Fithvael, and the elf dropped and rolled. The huge blade struck the pewter surface, sending blue-white sparks flying.
Gilead lunged at Lord Ire, slashing back and forth, but the monster’s slate armour denied all his blows with ease.
As the three fought on faster and harder, the room spun more violently, pivoting and wheeling on a set of invisible axes. Gilead and Fithvael kept their feet throughout, both now fighting head on with Lord Ire. The Chaos Lord slipped around their attack and brought his sword down towards Fithvael, slicing into his right shoulder before Gilead could block it.
Slumping to his knees, Fithvael lost his concentration and rolled helplessly around the revolving cube. Gilead watched his faithful friend fall and saw him tossed heedlessly around the metal box.
‘Illusion! It’s all illusion!’ Gilead yelled, but Fithvael still slammed remorselessly around the turning pewter box of the room.
‘Fithvael!’
Fithvael disappeared.
‘Where is he? What did you do to him, corrupt scum?’ Gilead cried, throwing himself at the chuckling nightmare. Lord Ire threw him aside.
But Gilead was not be denied. Suddenly shadowfast, he became a twisting blur, thrusting and lunging, chopping and slashing with his blade. The room spun and bucked but Gilead unconsciously did as Niobe was instructing him: he ignored the illusion and focussed only on Ire.
*
NIOBE WAITED IN the small dark space with Fithvael.
It was an antechamber, though beyond that small fact, she had no idea where she was. By force of will, she had taken Fithvael and herself out of the rocking metal cube.
‘Hold still,’ she hissed.
‘It hurts!’ Fithvael protested as she bound up his wound.
‘Of course it does! Hold still!’
‘Where is Gilead?’
LORD IRE GATHERED an echoing bellow in his gut and let it out in a long, rolling sound that filled the space around Gilead. The last son of Tor Anrok had just slashed his blade through the metal guard covering the dead eye on the subhuman side of Ire’s twisted face.
Gilead seized the advantage and danced in again, moving so fast now that the room seemed to have come to a lightly vibrating standstill. Whether it was the speed that Gilead had generated or the savage wound that Lord Ire had sustained, the elf warrior began to see something very different before him. The dark champ
ion began to lose his shape and form, blurring at the edges. His form flowed for a split second into an amorphous pulsing mass, before returning unsteadily to his former, humanoid shape.
NIOBE STARTED. SHE had seen Ire as Gilead had seen him, and the truth made her cry out.
‘What is it?’ asked Fithvael, his voice dulled by pain.
‘The son… I have seen the son.’
NIOBE LED FITHVAEL back through a nightmarish maze of passages, until at last they arrived once more at the vast chamber where the slaves were tethered.
‘Why have you brought me here?’ Fithvael asked as Niobe looked around.
Her voice was assured. ‘Do not mourn them, Fithvael te tuin. They will welcome death if it brings relief from this existence. Whether they live or die, you will have saved them. And live or die you will have saved humankind from a far worse fate than this.’ She believed what she said and the elf warrior believed it too, but a tear still found its way down the perfect contour of her cheek.
‘So which of these poor souls is the son of Ire?’ Fithvael asked, readying himself for the most distasteful kill of his career. He had slain many in battle, but to destroy a poor soul tethered lifelessly to a yoke solely to provide magical energy, that was murder and it held only disgust for him.
‘None of them,’ answered Niobe.
‘Then I ask again,’ Fithvael said sternly, ‘why have you brought me here?’
Niobe turned and looked down at the altar below them, at the innumerable strands plugged into the vast square rock and at the shifting patterns of Chaos runes squirming on its surface. She pointed, for she could barely speak.
‘The altar. The thing on the altar,’ she breathed.
‘What thing?’ asked Fithvael, whipping his head around to get another look at the abomination far below.
And he saw it. For the first time, he realised that there was something on top of the altar. The sight of the mesmerising runes and the thousands of glistening tethers had drawn his attention away from the dull shapeless top of the altar, but he truly saw it now. A lifeless mass, amorphous and colourless, entirely without form. He saw it because Niobe had seen it.
‘That is… the son of Ire?’ asked Fithvael, incredulous.
‘The Cipher,’ said Niobe weakly. ‘It collects and controls the magic.’ Her voice was broken and her mouth dry. She tried to speak again, Fithvael bent to listen to her.
‘It looks like Ire…’ she whispered.
‘That is what Ire looks like without his illusions in place?’ Fithvael said, already raising his sword.
IRE’S GREAT BLADE cut the air and Gilead darted back. The metal box that contained them continued to spin and roll. Gilead swung again, but the monster’s blade tip found his cheek and gave him a bloody gash. Gilead fell, and began to tumble as the box rolled.
It was real now; everything was too real.
LEAPING FROM BLOCK to block, Fithvael made his way towards the altar. He knew he had little time.
He leapt down onto the wide ledge of rock that surrounded the monstrosity and the first of the slave guard appeared. There were four of them, variously armoured. They had stone for skin, cracked along the joints and covered in nicks and scratches made by a thousand blades and missiles. When the creatures flexed their bodies their stone skins moved with them, like the hardening crust of a lava flow.
The mutated hellspawn stood four abreast in front of the altar, holding only batons and whips for weapons. They were the slave guard, and had never needed more than those light arms to control their prisoners.
Fithvael did not hesitate. He flew at them, blade swinging.
It merely sparked and spanged off the impenetrable skins of the Chaos beasts.
IN THE TUMBLING pewter box, Gilead slid down a turning wall and flinched away just in time as Ire’s massive blade scored the metal that had supported him.
He tried to gather his wits. Plaintive and far away, Niobe’s musical voice still called to him.
‘It’s all illusion, Gilead… all illusion…’
He rose, his blade clashing with Ire’s in a sparking shower of purple light. Again, again a deflection, a parry. Lord Ire’s skill with a sword was master-fill.
But Gilead had been trained by Nithrom, and the sword he swung had been his brother’s. He would not lose this fight.
FITHVAEL SMASHED OPEN the stony hide of the guard nearest him and fell back in revulsion. Underneath the slate armouring the monster’s legs was one huge, putrescent wound. There was neither skin nor bone, merely black, decaying flesh and an army of maggots and parasites feasting on the rotting body.
Fithvael drove himself forward, attacking the weakness. He sprayed stinking grubs and ichor all over himself and his blade. The guard toppled and burst at the seams, spewing out a host of foul writhing things along with the decayed matter that had once been its guts.
Fithvael leapt past the disgusting remains, dancing between the slashing weapons of the other guards. Above him, at the summit of the altar, the Cipher shifted slightly, as though uncomfortable.
GILEAD SWUNG IN again, and his blade made a gouge in Ire’s shoulder guard. ‘Hurting yet?’ Gilead goaded. Ire made no answer.
‘No matter… I believe I have kept you occupied long enough.’ Lord Ire suddenly froze, and glanced around at something Gilead couldn’t see. ‘Yes, I think I have…’ Gilead smiled.
FITHVAEL RAISED HIS sword and thrust it down into the disgusting amorphous sack that the Cipher. Rank viscous fluid ruptured out all over him and drizzled down the sides of the alter. The corpse-stench was overwhelming.
‘Lord Ire!’ Fithvael shouted defiantly, his hands still clutching his victorious weapon. ‘Your son is dead!’
THE PEWTER ROOM had gone. Lost in a fortress built solely upon dark magic, Gilead murmured Niobe’s name and tried to hold on to the last traces of her voice.
REALITY SPLIT APART. They fled amidst the decaying illusion as towers collapsed and a nightmarish storm erupted in the ravaged sky over the bastion. Spurs of magical energy vented into the sky, blowing out sections of wall that were only half-real. Heading for the gatehouse, Fithvael almost fell into Gilead.
‘Niobe? Where is she?’ Gilead bellowed. The abused and frustrated forces of Chaos were stripping the place apart around them.
‘Did she not return to you?’ Fithvael rasped.
Then, amidst the maelstrom, they saw her slight shape, running and dodging towards them through a storm of exploding magical energy. But the storm had gathered and fashioned itself into a hideous form sixty feet long with a comet-like tail extruding from it into infinity. It was Lord Ire, part angelic human masterpiece, part gelatinous, seething mass, part wind, part grotesque noise; all writhing, clawing, vengeful Chaos.
Gilead reached out to grab her and drag her with them. He took her hand and pulled at her with all his failing strength.
Niobe shivered and convulsed under the force of the sorcerous hurricane - then found herself lifted cleanly out of Gilead’s arms. She rose and whirled in the current of air that grasped her firmly in a deadly embrace.
Fithvael looked on, only yards away, yet still out of reach. He watched the great raging force sweep Niobe from Gilead’s desperate grip and, embracing her, whirl itself up in an energy tornado that whipped out into endless black space and was gone.
Then night itself came down and combusted the ruins of Lord Ire’s bastion into a vast explosion of shockwaves and smoke.
FITHVAEL CAME TO his senses opened his eyes. He stood in their last campsite amidst the midnight trees of the deepest Drakwald. Two horses stood nearby, heads bent, feeding on what little fresh vegetation they could find.
Fithvael lowered Gilead gently to the ground and, all his energy spent and his will used up, the loyal elf lay down beside his friend.
THERE IT IS, for all its worth. My bitterest tale. I warned you. No happy ending. But still, I have more heroic stories up my sleeve, more triumphant ones.
But this is the story that matt
ers. He lost her. Gilead lost her. She had bound himself to his mind and he let her slip away.
Few get over the death of a twin, but this…
Words fail me. Yes, that’s it. Fill my damn glass to the brim. I’m tired of these stories. They take it out of me.
What’s that you say? Did he ever find her?
I’m afraid I do not know. I hope so. All I know is what happened next.
4
GILEAD’S PATH
I fear your dreams. I fear we are too old.
SO, YOU’D KNOW the rest then, would you? The dark times that followed their defeat of Lord Ire and the loss that brought? Gods! Well, then, perhaps another one. I can manage that. Listen well…
From the smoking mere that was all that remained of Ire’s illusory bastion, they rode for days, months.
Every morning, they rose to the yellow glow of dawn and directed their course according to the fall of their shortening shadows. At noon, the light was white and clear, and the shadows warm and dappled, and with the light Fithvael’s hopes would rise. Then he would see the drop of his friend’s head and the white-knuckled grip of his hands on the wear-polished reins of his steed, and he would know that the light would soon fade and the shadows would grow long once more, until there was nothing but darkness again.
Each evening, the diminishing light turned every colour, tone and hue to a dull, uniform grey. That grey was echoed in the pallor of Gilead’s face. There was no expression there, save the dark, closed sadness that Fithvael had become accustomed to before, long ago, when Galeth’s memory was what drove Gilead. But his friend’s blank eyes held a new pain now, a new yearning.
Fithvael kept pace with Gilead, watching him as the heavy blanket of evening sky turned quickly to become a purple night that drove them to a new campsite and the torture of another sleepless, dreamless nightmare.
Weeks passed and, beneath the worn and weary hooves of their steeds, many miles of thinning black forest and tracts of lush green pastureland were crossed. They brushed the hem of the human world. Gilead loathed the crass man-made patterns he detected in the felling of trees, the cultivation of fields and the construction of their despised towns. He hated the humans for their heavy faces and their dull minds. He hated them for their short lives and their hard hearts. He hated them all.
